Wednesday, December 14, 2011

you may come from distant future, by way of beam travel or strapped to
a time chopper, to the past, skim one instance to next, scanning through hard
files stacked up and soft, in search, to solve unsolved assassinations and
genocides, to mark unmarked gravestones and to bottle unbottled ashes scattered in
the winds of time and soon you shall know, leaks or no leaks, that there is a
hole in things, and information

‘So it can’t be very much exciting as, hmm…but anyway go on and
tell me what it is’, she allowed him, with an indulged benevolence only a wife can
bestow.

‘I… well… See, I want you to listen carefully because I’m
going to tell you this just once, there’s not going to be any discussion, nor
any forgetfulness, and two years from now if ever you wanted to recall this day
I want your memory to be a clean, blank slate to not recall and utter one word
from it.’

‘So what I want to tell you is’, he continued, ‘I’m quitting
as a homemaker. In other words, I will no longer be cooking, except maybe for
making tea, as and when I feel like it.’

…

It’s been two years since and there’s no knowing how things
transpired and how well it all went because they moved house long time ago.

I’d like to believe they had the baby – I recall they had a
quarrel whether to keep it or not keep it, like it was about some toy – and it all
went rosy and as planned but how am I to know all that just being conscious and
nothing more.

I still hear echoes of the many conversations they had had from
the spaces they once occupied, calling each others names, words of admiration and
more such.

For a house, I cannot vacuum the accumulated dust off
my floor, get the webs growing out of my corners wiped clean, nor can I cement
the breaks in my walls.

A house is some good, a sentient house even more so, but an
abandoned house, sentient or not, is no good, wouldn’t you say.

Now is that a knock at the door or a creak or both? I hope it’s
not one of those moments where I heard it just in my head.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The pointed gun, to analytically
put it, could be the extension of his vendetta, that which he shakes times few
a day and tucks in his undies, alright, and when I – T Glad, a she – point it
what could it be: Dentata? I don’t know. I speculate it takes an acutely
educated guess, not acquired from schools big and small, and for my money
you’re not equipped to make it.

An educated mobster isn’t an
educated mobster y'know…

And you’re thinking she isn’t
finishing what she’s starting and you’re guessing: Gangbanger, no?, not
entirely missing the point, and then I finish it by saying an educated mobster
isn’t a mobster, isn’t a monster, rather a gangbuster, just when your skin
starts to leak head to toe, and I tell you I’m aiming for your fingernail and
not the hand you guess I’m aiming at, if it were to blast your finger off
that’s but the blind gun’s fault, not mine, and once I pepper spray your wound
for purely antiseptic reasons, if you’re still not telling me whatever it is that
I want to know about, just to shine my skills, not to make a point, I will aim
for the next nail, the next, and so on till you tell it all short and tall.

Now…

Which one of those freezers in
the city did you, Rattle Teeth, stuff your brother in and why? I’m aiming…fret
not…for your fingernail…!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The marble homes inside it an
upside-down vision, dusted and stormed, reflected. Catapulted, its trajectory an
upward straight-line – up and straight, in furtive flight. Trees, pillars, sky,
roofless homes, unending rows of roofs, architecture, all culminate to a
head-braced face, dashing against molten metal, the impact the marble cannot
withstand, splinters and scatters, the withering ground its final refuge.
Golinath spits his gall, leaps and pins down the perpetrator. Davood, after a
unstruggled clever struggle, from under his rival’s grip slips, a snake
shedding its skin, climbing his back, gripping his throat, he screams: ‘Who’s
taller now, you lumbering gient?’ Golinath must stand up now or lie forever
there, nose pressed to the dust. Either way, Davood’s victory, as yet
unannounced, is apparent. ‘When I’m riot, you’re wrung!’ The rival stands up,
the man half his size clung to his neck, to acknowledge defeat. ‘Let’s be the divided
dominant.’ The wind blows askew and the crowd blurts out an uproar. ‘You mean,
in other words, divide and dominate?’ says surly Golinath. Davood chooses to
rather hold his peace.

The place is guided by heart and
mind, or at least that’s what it’s been believed to be. What holds sway over
what, between heart and mind? When you sever the link between the two you
should know, they converse and concur. Clasp the vessels, in suspended
animation preserve and observe them. Decades go by. While the greatest minds
are at it, things go askance – glands, bones, spleen, for instance, revolt –
things go berserk. Some die, others spew venom, some malnourish, others
question. When things get worse, this worse, when it’s late, this late, it’s
all but possible to restore the system. By the by, observance yields results,
only there’s no significant difference, statistically speaking, between the
observed: They both perform, albeit in varied territories, the higher function
of reflection and expression in order to attribute meaning, in a world devoid
of meaning, to inexplicable phenomena which is nothing but an offshoot of the
compunction of wallowing in the lowest common denominator function of survival.

In the middle of everything,
Davood gets comfortable in his new skin, the inexplicable adaptability of which
surprises him. The media celebrate him. He sets the standards and what
yesterday was written off as ugly is today an accepted norm: Beauty. He grows,
his muscles swell up, what’s beneath his field of vision grows smaller and
smaller. When he stands up after one of those treaties to shake hands with
Golinath, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Yes, shoulder-to-shoulder in the
sense touching shoulders. He feels out of sorts for a moment as he senses he’s
catching a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror when he’s not. There’s no distinction
as to who’s who. There’s no telling this is Golinath and that is Davood. It
will no longer be Davood versus Golinath. It hereupon will be Golinath versus
Golinath. He will not be quitting. No!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Sun paints the marketplace in golden
hues. It’s a glimpse you thought she said you caught every day and what then is
marvelous about it, you quander. At the center of the market, a man named Odd
tells a woman named Go she makes perfect sense when she argues they must set
their shop up elsewhere the next time. You don’t sell same goods twice for the
same price, not just here, anywhere. They sell it once everywhere and sold here
L, O, V and E just minutes after setting up shop. Odd and Go are conspicuously
attired and so if you thought what they get out of selling what’s worth in
grands for peanuts and pursued them thinking your pursuit would take you to
their lair of inheritance, a mile into it, right about the third curve, your
heart skipped a beat when you saw them dissipate into thin air.

…………

O walks like a polite person,
something she does whenever she’s been sold for ten bucks. ‘So, you’re love?’ B
asks. ‘Part of, not entirely, yes’ O answers. She’s clad, upon first
impression, in a translucent body bag. Inside, she’s scantily dressed, like a supposedly
skint actress in a million-dollar film. ‘Care for a smoke’ he asks, offering
her a cigar. ‘Hookah, tobacco-less; don’t smoke, no thanks’ she says.

………

C is at the dining hall fork and
spoon and he couldn’t contain his desire to consume. ‘Love resides not in the
heart, I discovered, nor does it reside in the brain or genitalia. It resides in
one empty space between heart and lungs. This is a scientific claim, hypothetical
or not, and not some fantastic claim. Now, tell me, just because you tell me you
want to consume love, how do I isolate an empty space, salt it, spice it, cook
it?’ B tells C what he isn’t in the mood to hear.

‘I don’t care what science had to
say about love or lust or anything. I know what it is where it is when I see it
and this time will be no different’ C retorts and rushes to the kitchen.

……

She’s standing in the kitchen
adjacent to a rack her height. ‘Where is she? Did you or did you not double
lock double-check the house?’ C asks B. O is such slender thing she could stand
behind a leafless plant and not be seen. ‘There!’ B says. She moves and halts beside
the fridge. ‘Now where?’ C yells, growing impatient.

O shoes her shoes and gloves her
hands (what is that?), puts her feet up in the air and walks on hands (is
this), whirls like a dervish (some form of veneration?), whirls like a dervish out
of her mind out of control, whirls on one hand, whirls on fingertips and she’s
up in the air (what?), shoots to the ventilation above (?), clears through it
like it’s a hoop (!). Seconds pass, there comes a thud, running footsteps echo
and fade. Their eyes explore every nook of the kitchen as if she’s present somewhere
somehow invisible and only when they fix their gazes upon the spread-eagle body
bag does it dawn on them dear love has fled.

‘Love was here…

Love is an artist…’

‘I don’t get it’ B says.

‘…a hormone-driven

Escapologist.’

C demarcates the body bag and
scribbles at its foot with a permanent blood red marker:Love was here.

With B fired from his cookery, C backpacks
under the influence of an indefinite wanderlust.

…

L dislikes O, as he thinks she
looks loud but O isn’t really what she looks and he’s like if you look it you
better be it, even so he fakes a genuine smile because after all it’s the team that
matters and it’s all about spirit. O never forgets to leave the translucent
jacket behind which L forgets to forget half the time and consequently had to stand
and endure Go’s rebuke and this adds to L’s so-called virtues (his dislike of O
being one) yet another virtue (again on account of O) called envy. V and E couldn’t
wait to see O back again, she being the last to return, and are all platonic hugs
and kisses for the millionth time. Once the celebration fades, feast feasted,
they’re laid once again up on a beautified platform.

‘Come on, come and fetch anything
for ten bucks, come, come on and fetch L O V E for just ten bucks’, the man named
Odd bellows at the top of his lungs. When he pauses, the woman named Go ensues
the call. It’s a cloudy day and out of thin air a crowd emerges and encircles
the shop whilst stocks last.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Our ship was floating over miasma having entered earth’s atmosphere. Birds were sweeping down across right below
us. In their claws clutched for prey were little men. Or was it? Some of them
were fat boys. It was simplicity to assume they were captives clutched and
dropped against their own volition. In actuality, some of them waved at us and
even winked. The rest of them had they caught sight of the ship would have
smiled, stuck their tongues out, grinned, put their fingers up or ground their
teeth. These are essential human expressions as we’d come to learn and must be
anticipated. But from such a state of euthanasia, it wasn’t. Birds persuaded
little fat boys and men. Or was it the human pack? When the claws released them,
dropping deep down below they exploded. Some of them were immobile but for the inertia
of descent while others spinning all the way down to respective targets. The
smoke was infuriating. The ship had its Armor Forther on, yet it shook a
little. Birds abandoning their flight plunged into the madness below. I hadn’t
slept the last day and I was so exhausted I slept with the spectacles on. The
clouds would take their time before raining down a cascade of toxins. I had no
intention of catching that sight. I’d much rather shut my system down and dream
of harmless nightmares.

When I woke up, the ship was far
away from earth’s atmosphere. Earth
rendered uninhabitable by earthlings. That was what my console had to say. We’re
sailing home to tend our own. It was sad we couldn’t do our planetarian work
for Earth but it was solace to know I’d soon get to walk the dusty sands of my
home planet.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Whiz lived up in a punctured
volleyball. The ball was punctured, yes, but wasn’t so much shrunk. It retained
the shape of what one would call a near-imperfect globe. It had a mouth wide
open and the puncture in particular was known as zone hole. Dey Kanna!, who
owned the ball, the story goes, hung it midair when he found another ball to
play with. From under a guava tree, when it’s time for supper, Whiz flew up and
down and everywhere before feeding on a fruit-feeding bat after which high on
hot blood in her potbelly she was back again inside what they called Voll, the
ball. Whiz and her ilk, the residents of Voll, had sworn never to drink out of the
semi-divine Human, near as a Gatherer can tell.

……

Dey came leaping one morn. Clumsy
on a diet of five appams, it was obvious he was denied that extra glass of
coconut milk. He held a cloth that stank of kerosene. Standing at a safe
distance from a swell honeycomb, he draped the ball and struck the match. It
was all smoke and the bees buzzed and fled. By then Voll had come down, having
shrunk it was burning bright. Dey drank the nectar as much as he could and the
comb was flung all over the place. Soldiers went and gathered what was leftover.
That was how I came to savor my bite. I myself never went anywhere anymore than
go round and round the rim of this rusty plate that I call my open universe.
Why because this is far more adventurous than scaling a blade of grass or circling
the inner walls of a jam bottle and rather much safer. Dey kicked the smoky
ball and it dropped flat not far from the shade of the tree. That, you see, was
the end of Voll, once home for hundreds of dear-departed Suckers. I’d like to
imagine Whiz was somewhere else still going abuzz and not in there drunk to
head asleep.

……

Dey ritually climbs the roof every
day, glides the length of the roof and dives on a mound of sand. Sometimes he
lands on his feet, sometimes on his butt, sometimes he lands his head stuck to
the mound but he climbs and dives over and over even so. When where I’m
circling is feet away from where he usually lands, it’s not the fear that at
one point he might stomp on me. That he will not for the fear the rim I’m so obsessed
about will slit his foot. What if the plate the rim is part of were to somehow topple.
What if I was stuck beneath it and he stomped over it. The ground is wet, so
it’s soft as cheese, and the last thing I’d wish for is to be squashed in such
a seemingly complex plain fashion.

Monday, October 31, 2011

There was one tiny fraction of a
moment I really laughed out. Rest of the time I hoped (and hoped) it’s going to
get better and it only drove me to the extremes of tedium. The plot was decent
enough but the writing, execution and performances were awful (1.2/10). There
was a “similar” film (I think it’s called American
Bully. Or is it American Pee?) that
was more daring and I (faintly) recall it to have had a few more moments.

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

It’s a miracle. The thought the
Coens are capable of making a bad movie never has crossed my mind, leave alone
something this bad (1.1/10). The one redeeming aspect of it is Jennifer Jason
Leigh’s performance and even that grows thinner as it progresses because it’s
all about Tim Robbins(’ character) who’s plain-as-blizzard miscast but even
with the right casting, a shoddily conceived screenplay couldn’t have been
saved from diving face first into a dry-as-a-bone pool.

Endhiran (2010)

Given our global overexposure,
there’s nothing new here; yet, it feels overall almost original. One trouble with
it is it’s overly commercialized which is a un-necessity (2.6/10). (Here the
benefit of forward keys come in handy but can’t imagine catching it on silver
screen where there isn’t such a provision). Another is it is written (or
rewritten) for a star which is to say it’s deliberate on cashing in on the cult
of personality which is in turn to say the audience can think meaning they
cannot.

A Bittersweet Life (2005)

If you ask me, the rest of the
moviedom must be inspired by Asian cinema and stop flat-out stealing from it. A
tale of mobster morality and vengeance staged to perfection (9.4/10), it’s
bloody gorgeous!

Shaitan (2011)

It may be an updation of Kashyap’s
never-released Paanch (I couldn’t watch it past the first hour, blame it on the
large miscasting and (dare I say) bad songs), but here the ensemble is aptly
cast and the music benefits the aestheticity. The silent subplot, what some
would call overindulgence, is poetic to me and makes perfect sense. Except for
its one psychological cliché, it makes a good fusion of art house and commercial
cinema (8.4/10).

Engeyum Eppodhum (2011)

The characteristics of the two
female characters (played brilliantly by Ananya and Anjali), the portrayal of
them, is very unique, and what with meticulous attention to minor characters
that journey in two different buses that are about to collide, the screenplay
soars (8/10). A minor quibble would be the presence of the song that involves
shoulder elevations.

Ardh Satya (1983)

Some movies never age. Thanks to
the ever evasive corruption, this movie remains relevant as ever. A film that’s
been used template of sorts for cop flicks since its arrival, shades of it can
be witnessed in Shaitan. The atmospheric recitation of the poem remains pivotal
(9/10).

Brazil (1985)

Throw in British humor, add to it
Gilliam’s inventiveness and if the end result isn’t a chariot of gold on fire
that’d be too sad. What doesn’t work everywhere and every time (I’m thinking
The Pythons) works here seamlessly (9/10).

Monday, October 24, 2011

You who are deaf to night chirping, you who are thoughtless of earth
floating, you who are oblivious to nature, you who are prisoner of slippy
senses, you who are possessor of a sleepy mind, wake the frig up!

Agon stirred and shifted his
lying one side to another. He partly opened his eyes and, with hindsight, spoke
to the little toe of Feline by asking, ‘Tell me, platonic love, is it ten yet?’

Standing almost over him, she
said that it’s not and it’s nine. The (so-called) hearing is at ten and it
takes half hour for you to groom and
another half to commute to the court.

He made his mind up against
grooming for the imminent occasion. The very thought of facing the mirror
inspired great unpleasantness. So Agon said resolutely to Feline, ‘Wake me up
when it’s one past ten.’ And adding, a moment before drifting into a dreamless
sleep, ‘Stop the meticulous pedicure and you’ll start looking far less stupid
on the inside.’

She leapt twice on the mattress
before diving and crashing on it. Guiding her head under an oversized pillow,
pulling the velvet drape from a corner, she said, ‘He, the very upset Turv,
called in to say he’ll be there in time.’

It was a grumble she heard or
something said and she was almost certain it was ‘What for?’

To sit ducks. Perhaps.

Location: Dom

…

It’s was eleven when Agon stood
inside the dock. Noises died, there were whispers and then a presence of
silence.

The dome filtered in the beams of
low noon that lit the courtroom up bright enough. The judge spoke. It was a
coldly warm day and the sweat beads evaporating in slow-motion provisioned Agon
the coolness he didn’t ask for. He ran his hand over his peppered scalp. When
he held the wooden obstruction his palm made its impression. His hand withdrew
and wiped itself on the cotton that he wore. He must’ve forgotten his
handkerchief. Judge spoke on.

It was a room of mere five
hundred, half the crowd not wanting to wait beyond its want to wait having
walked out. On one side of the judge was a statue of Justine poised sword in
her hand and a lump in her throat. On the other side was – Talk No Evil, Walk
No Evil, Bite No Evil, Bark No Evil – the Three Parrots and a Dog.

Agon’s eyes turning nomadic meandered.
There were all kinds of people and one thing they all had in common was they
belonged to Planet Dom. All of them gazed at the judge and Agon, alternating
between them, except for Turv. He was observing Agon, not wasting a moment on
the wigged head. There was the uniformed Top. Two rows behind him was Latisha hands
crossed. Right wasn’t there like expected. That’s a man of action, not a man of
social (and judicial) presence. Leaning by the window away stood Feline, unmindful
of the audience minding her business battling her innermost thoughts.

A while ago when they were on
their way he asked Feline, peering into her eyes, what she saw in his eyes. She
told him without a second thought what she saw - Quite frankly,an abyss.
He expected her to pose the question back to him and she didn’t. She knew,
perhaps, what his answer would be.

When the judge ceased to talk,
Turv was going to defend rising to his feet. Throwing his hand up Agon gestured
meaning ‘No’, without saying so, ‘Stop’ and an otherwise argumentative Turv
fell quiet. When Agon stepped outside - assuming he nursed, like the rest of
us, an ego - there was a lump in its throat.

Many things the young (namesake) judge
said and it wasn’t a speech that quite made a pleasant listening to. It was pronouncement
of sorts. An excerpt would suffice to rouse apprehension.

You are a chump who cannot drag himself to a hearing on time… A Doman
is a free State
Agent and not a free individual agent… You can roam all you want within one
thousand miles but here on out you can never leave Planet Dom… The moment you
transgress one thousand miles you will have your wrist bracelet replaced with the
heavier neck bracelet… You tell us what to do or we will tell you what not to
do.

National Bird: Parrot

…

Feline wasn’t pleased and she
didn’t know why. A saffron bandana draped over his head, Agon shook a media person
off his presence. Perhaps he told him it wasn’t him he was looking for and the
goat he looked for exited one of the side doors. He walked to where Top stood.
Behind them was Latisha, bandage over her color bone, hands behind her back, chin
up, implying she was looking down on her. Her posture betrayed her trauma.

Those days if you were a Raw Machine
you played too rough half the country hated you, so it was all too common to
walk limp and move about slinged long past healing time to evoke the hard-to-come-by
public empathy.

Feline had aimed for Latisha’s
face, what for, to leave her footprint for once. Latisha is too swift. She moved and the
misplaced kick left her with an AC dislocation. There were two deaths in the
arena that day. They were Latisha’s teammates, skilled second to none, and it came
to them by way of Feline’s feet. There was considerable gap between where they
stood and the air in the vicinity was calm and tight.

The other side, she saw, Turv
handling a media girl. She could say without hearing him talk he talked persuasively
for ten minutes without making any definitive sense. When he passed the folks, Agon was telling Top something about the cult of personality that hides
behind ideology. When he came beside Feline he didn’t say anything, only shook
his head. When Agon joined them, Turv had questions for him. He was baffled by
his affectation and the lack of it inside the dock. So he asked Agon what he was
thinking all the while standing there to which he answered.

I imagined a mirror between the us, which includes me, and the judge.
The judge spoke to his reflection in the mirror. I imagined, yes, but I have no way
of knowing it to be true.

For whatever reason, and it
doesn’t matter why anyway, just like the judge minutes ago, the media person entered
the courtroom and exited a side door.

Population: Fifty million

…

Three Parrots and a Dog: A Companion Piece

There is a house that homes three
cages and inside each cage is a parrot. The hunting dog at the house marches back and forth
restless. Stoop it, hunder says one
parrot. The cages are suspended at uneven heights. Dog barks at them. Pick on yore one size, scoundrel says
another. Over time, the barks grow unbearably violent. Reasonably enough,
parrots grow restless. Parrot two, that wasn’t saying anything at all, parrots
the barking dog. Parrots three and one follow suit. Dog grows listless and feels
vanquished. It folds itself quietly on to the ground. Surely enough, for the
parrots, it’s time to snail nap. Time lapsing. Through the glass ceiling seasons
pass as parrots nap.

Written for the chip by Agon, director uncredited… (rumored to be
Latisha)

This is one depiction of the (propagandist) advert (short film), now
banned, that you could catch oftentimes on the skyline of Planet Dom and on the
tubes indoor.

Friday, October 21, 2011

She
collects antiques and shelves them in racks hidden away so that prying-eyed guests
are spared from glares of envy.

The
last time they met, she placed the object of her choice – an authentic ivory
vessel that looked every which way magnificent – a foot away from her friend
from whom it elicited waw’s and mmm’s when she said:

‘Out
of all my collectible, this is the best object I’ve got.’

The
next time - in a restaurant, under a Turkish chandelier - the friend introduced her
for the first time to her beau and while he was away looking for a socket to plug
in his iPod she told her in a muffled undertone:

No one cares what your grades
are. One cares even less how high or low your Consumer Rank is. What you are on
any given day is all that matters. I have my drop-down list of qualms but these
are little things I love about Forty-First Century.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Toss it one way it drops limp. Toss
it ‘nother way it stays stuck to the coiled rope. Can’t never get this gawdamn top
spinnin. Set it spinnin at the tip of Luka’s finger, in the small of Bhagya’s
back, on mine lil sis’ palm and much elsewheres, all just months ago. In a shor
time if Ai learnt anythin substantial it’s that havin an intact right hand is vital
and it matters much too much. And it’s no, no laughin matter strivin to be a
lefty.

Am goin number one hans free. A
croc, Ai thought barely a babe, bites mine finger off. If only I’d been more
inquisitive about the rustle down ther. We were excursionin by the mudflat,
bunkin class, pedalin five miles under a red hot sun, all for crave of pleasant
weather. Used to ride ther every now and then.

Folks Muthu and Pencil Luka pledge
they get the finger back. I have a phantom finger. And for a while I never
miss the finger much. They think it could be sewn back up. Open the belly up, save
for canes and cans it's spic-n-span, no trace of finger, they come back and
say. Must haf been the wrong croc. Next time they go it’s past migration time. Turns
out we excursioned much too early.

That time – You Make Do with What
You Got – it comes. Folks say, when Ai grow up, without it Ai will super fail
at foreplay. If that didn’t mean the play had everythin to do with four fingers,
Ai got it, got 'em all, I say. No, no, they say, it’s finger specific. Be that as it may, if
that ‘int a ruse may it be, Ai want to javelin before Ai go on to master
anythin else.

They go wet if you tell them you
throw javelin and wetter if you throw it so well. How Ai know it? Champ of the
school and that gal from rooftop pick a random dark corner for chitty chat. Am
ther all fours by the fell logs pickin roaches and frags for lab. Heard it from
the filly’s mouth. Ai do a sprint and release the javelin off mine five-finger
hand, it lands right behind me. Tha faks wrong with it.

Mind the language, Sammy, PEd says.
Ai got to take time and show him Ai can spin the top with left as well with
right, he says on, only then will he lemme access the equipment ‘gain. No
danger to others, mind you, danger to mine own self, man goes on and on. Ai migh
take time but am not one for givin up. All said, life would haf been half less busy
if it wasn’t for the moment between the blind croc and mine bird finger.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

‘Skips
channels, mainly, to Discovery, lots
of pretty ads for I-don't-know-what, the episode itself is viscerally borderline
interesting, having second thoughts about catching the next episode’ said a
viewer. The fact that it was a silver screening must be noted. ‘Since the
inspired Badlands – pardon the Days of Heaven I haven’t viewed – after the
grand Thin Red Line and halfway
brilliant New World,
it seems the filmmaker has gone soft in the head. Tree of Life is pretentious bollocks.’

Maybe
I was fortunate to have viewed it at the comfort of desktop. You’re in an
auditorium to watch the film rolling uneventfully, not to watch the
disappointed audience walking out when it’s barely ten minutes in. In an
auditorium when you could gladly excuse the occasional breaking into laughter
if that’s a reaction to a witty narrative, you might not want to excuse the incessant
whisperings and what-the-fug-is-going-on’s. It’s best the audience walked out. Even
though I do not embrace the aforesaid critique, the reference to testicles in
particular, it must be said Tree of Life
borders, sadly perhaps unconsciously, on the phallogocentric perspective.

To
go from explicating movie-going to explicate Tree of Life, even though I do not mind embracing its concept (rather
perceived theological/philosophical concept) of Universalism, I believe it is one
of a kind beast that takes itself too seriously and since it is a hard nut to
crack it cannot be satisfactorily explicated. The least that can be said about
it is its aesthetics and by aesthetics I mean not the CGI but the
cinematography that involves the story of the family (the neighborhood) and that
is by all means unique. The CGI shots though by no means bad aren’t in the same
vein distinct, and how well it segues with the “pivotal” human narrative and to
what extent it proves effective remains questionable.

Pitt
as father, besides McCracken as son, is well cast, when Chastain as mother albeit
good in parts mostly is typecast, Penn as adult Jack is either miscast or underused
or both. It’s not meant to be a feature of ensemble cast. The casting of big
stars, Pitt and Penn here, is in order to have the selling point high and in
that regard it may be a successful venture but as an artistic endeavor it’s rather
mediocre.

Films
mustn’t be overlong, not unnecessarily. Case in point is 2081. A film based on Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron, it’s built around a flawed premise. Though a
satire it’s tonally grim and that makes the premise all the more flawed. But
what’s done with 2081 makes it make
at least remote sense. It is made skillfully as a short film that clocks in at
26 minutes, makes a point, and before you know down rolls the credits. For its runtime
of 138 minutes, if not too short, had Tree of Life been given something of a similar
treatment, say 80 minutes, it could’ve been effective, if not to make a point, if
not to make definitive sense, to make more sense than the little sense it makes.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

For a few laurels more, Mr Law hunted Mr ThoughtThere are quests that take no time at allStreets, cities, attics, homes, countries were places he wasn’t foundThere are quests that take all the time in the worldHe wasn't traceable even on the NetThere are quests that are outside of timeWhat, if not nothing, the hands of Law cannot doHe had it figured out at last Poet lives in his headWhat, if not little, the hands of Law can do